Store is an abstracting API that is intended to farm off fetching of data to threads running asynchronously from the mainloop that actually fetch data needed for a genlist (or possibly future other widgets) so scrolling never blocks waiting on IO (though normally this should be the users job - if using genlist, to ensure all data genlist needs is in memory at the time it needs it, and if it isn't to queue and defer a fetch and let genlist know later when its ready. Store actually does this and implements the infrastructure of this, leaving the actual fetch and convert up to functions provided by the user).

It is possible for store to run inline without a thread, but this is highly inadvisable. you can disable this with:

elm_store_fetch_thread_set(store, EINA_FALSE);

Store works first by creating a store, setting up functions to list items and fetch items. Currently the only store type supported is the filesystem store, which will list the files inside a directory (not recursively) and then hand each file it finds (the file path) to the list function for evaluation.

The list function may look at filename, may open the file or do anything it likes to determine something about the file. Either it filters it out (returns EINA_FALSE) and it is discarded or it returns EINA_TRUE and also provides a "sort id" which is a string store uses to figure out sorting. This string could be the filename, or some data based on its contents. The strings are sorted alphabetically like any normal ASCII strings, with case being important. As this listing function runs in a thread, it can do blocking IO and parsing without hurting the fluidity of the main loop and GUI. The list function also returns information on how to map fields in the source file to elements of the genlist item. For example, how the fetcher reads the private data struct of the user (what memory offset in the struct the data is at) and what type is there (it's a label of some sort, an icon, or with a custom mapping function that figures it out itself and creates the content needed for the genlist item).

Store then uses this sort id to build (over time) a sorted list of items that then map 1:1 to genlist items. When these items are visible and need content, Store calls the fetch function per item, which is responsible for fetching the data from the given item and returning data to store so it can map this to some item content. This function also runs in a thread, and thus can do blocking IO work to later return the data. Sorting is optional and can be enabled or disabled too.

When items are no longer needed, store will cal the unfetch function to free data in memory about that item that is no longer needed. This function is called in the mainloop and is expected to take minimal or almost no time to simply free up memory resources.

Define Documentation

Typedef Documentation

Enumeration Type Documentation